雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第8章:水銀延時線(19)
Of course, there was to be no physical motion when the 'scanner' went to fetch an instruction, or operate upon numbers stored on the 'tape'; no motion but that of electrons.
Instead, the control of the ACE would work by a process rather like that of dialling a telephone number, to reach the right place.
ACE的定位控制，是一個類似於電話號碼的機制，Most of the complexity of the electronic circuits arose from the demands of this 'tree' system.
它是一個樹狀的系統，很大程度上是由電路來解決的。
There was also a complexity in the way that thirty-two half-way houses, 'temporary storage' locations consisting of special short delay lines, were provided for the shunting around of pulses.
還有一個問題，就是要用32條特殊的短程延遲線組成的"暫存線"來中轉脈衝。This was quite different from the EDVAC conception, in which all the arithmetic would be done by shunting numbers in and out of a central 'accumulator'.
這與EDVAC非常不同，在EDVAC的設計中，所有的算術運算都是通過將數據輸入或輸出"累加器"來完成的。In the ACE design the arithmetical operations were 'distributed' around the thirty-two 'temporary storage' delay lines in an ingenious way.
而ACE的設計則通過一種巧妙的方式，將算術運算分配在32個短程延遲線上。The point of this complexity was that it increased the speed of operation. Speed took a slightly higher priority than simplicity.
這樣做的優點，就是提高了運算速度，而速度比簡單更重要。This was reflected also in the fact that Alan planned the pulse rate of the ACE to be a million a second, straining electronic technology to the full.
圖靈充分利用電子技術，使ACE的速度高達每秒100萬次脈衝注。His emphasis on speed was natural enough, granted his Bletchley experience, in which speed was of the very essence, a few hours marking the difference between usefulness and pointlessness.
他之所以對速度非常重視，可能是出於他在布萊切利的經歷。在那裏，速度就是一切，幾小時的滯後，可以使所有工作前功盡棄。It was also related to the universality of the electronic computer.
另外，速度跟通用性也有關係。In 1942 they had tried to get faster Bombes to cope with the fourth rotor;
1942年，第四個轉盤從天而降，他們必須使炸彈機跑得更快，才能對付它。they had been saved by the German slip-up with the weather reporting signal system,
如果不是後來德國亂髮氣象信號，but without this stroke of fortune they would have had to wait over a year for the machinery to match the problem.
他們可能需要一年的時間，才能解決這個問題。One virtue of a universal machine would lie in its ability to take on any new problem immediately—but this meant that it must be as fast as possible from the start.
通用機的優點，就是能夠隨時着手，處理新出現的問題，而這也意味着，通用機必須儘可能地快。It would hardly be desirable to re-engineer a universal machine, for the sake of a special problem. The whole point was to get the engineering out of the way once and for all, so that all the work thereafter could go into the devising of instruction tables.
人們不可能爲了解決一個更難的問題，而重新設計一個更快的通用機，所以必須儘量使它一次性地滿足所有問題，以便後來的工作僅限於編寫指令表。
